Relation With Humans
The Houbara Bustard is widely prized in Arabia as a quarry for falconers, particularly because its meat is valued an aphrodisiac (though according to one doctor it is instead a diuretic). Widespread hunting and loss of habitat have greatly reduced numbers. The allocation of hunting rights led to a diplomatic dispute between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
A major conservation and breeding project is based near Agadir, Morocco and Rahim Yar Khan in Pakistan. The International Foundation for Conservation and Development of Wildlife is a not-for-profit foundation funded by Saudi crown prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud. The project breeds Houbaras using artificial insemination, and the offspring are released to the wild. A similar project, with The National Avian Research Centre of the International Fund for Houbara Conservation, under the auspices of the royal families of Abu Dhabi and Dubai, is under way in the UAE.
In Pakistan, the Houbara Bustard is regarded as the provincial bird of Balochistan (Pakistan). While falconers are reportedly rarely seen in Pakistan anymore because of the poor security situation, Houbaras continue to be hunted each year in Pakistan with 25 permits by the government issued for the 2011-12 hunting season, each permit allowing one hundred birds to be hunted by the permit holder. Most of these permits have gone to royalty, rulers and influential commoners from Arab states such as Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Bahrain, Dubai and Saudi Arabia.
A team of researchers found that, from 1998 to 2001, Houbara numbers dropped 63% in China, 60% in Kazakhstan, and 50% in Oman.
Read more about this topic: Houbara Bustard
Famous quotes containing the words relation with, relation and/or humans:
“There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)
“When needs and means become abstract in quality, abstraction is also a character of the reciprocal relation of individuals to one another. This abstract character, universality, is the character of being recognized and is the moment which makes concrete, i.e. social, the isolated and abstract needs and their ways and means of satisfaction.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“Because humans are not alone in exhibiting such behavior—bees stockpile royal jelly, birds feather their nests, mice shred paper—it’s possible that a pregnant woman who scrubs her house from floor to ceiling [just before her baby is born] is responding to a biological imperative . . . . Of course there are those who believe that . . . the burst of energy that propels a pregnant woman to clean her house is a perfectly natural response to their mother’s impending visit.”
—Mary Arrigo (20th century)